EMMETT’S GIFT

A synopsis

by Charles Deemer

 

            On the day after the Bicentennial, the body of an old man is discovered hanging from a tree in a park in Hamartin, a small farming community in central Oregon. A homophobic note is attached to the man’s body. The shocking story makes the national news wire.

            Shandy Anderson, a young artist, hears the story on the morning TV news during her move from Hamartin’s small-town boredom to an exciting new life in San Francisco. She knows the old man, Emmett Hale, whose generous gift of money made her escape possible – and who had paid her for sex. But how can he be the victim of a homophobic crime if he isn’t a homosexual? And why would he be murdered when everyone in town knew he had terminal cancer? Shandy decides to return home not only for Emmett’s funeral but to find out what really happened.

Using this hook, EMMETT’S GIFT follows the story of the unusual romance between an old man dying of cancer and a bright young woman who can’t keep a local job after high school and feels trapped in her small home town. It also is the story of the community’s growing outrage about their affair and how Shandy uses the experience to grow.

The developing Emmett-Shandy relationship gets caught in the cross-fire of intense personal hostility between their friend Arnie Woodworth and Chief Deputy Paul Garner. Garner, a Christian conservative, is running for County Sheriff; Arnie, Shandy’s retired art teacher turned gay activist, lets no one forget he is the only “out-of-the-closet” homosexual in Cascadia County. Garner makes Arnie, sex and sin the centerpiece of his campaign, and Emmett and Shandy, a scandalous “grandpa-granddaughter” liaison, get caught in Garner’s wide net.

The situation becomes volatile when someone paints a threatening homophobic message on Arnie’s barn. Arnie’s revengeful response to the vandalism is to announce he is hosting, on the Bicentennial no less, the First Annual Hamartin Festival of Gay Arts, inviting his artist friends from Portland to pull it off. The community is more angry about the use of its name in the festival publicity than by the vandalism of Arnie’s barn. Most people want Arnie to go away, or at least to shut up about his sexuality. The art show also causes friction between Shandy and Emmett.

The Emmett-Shandy romance reaches a crisis when Emmett proposes marriage, and Shandy rejects him. As the holiday weekend approaches, Emmett’s body tells him the end is at hand. He prepares to go through with his plan to take his own life, a death with dignity that will spare him the inhumane suffering he watched his wife go through with cancer. Having no descendants, he rewrites his will to make Shandy the beneficiary, and he gives her three thousand dollars “escape money.”

Shandy takes the money and runs. She’s ready to make her mark as an artist in the big city. Arnie’s art show goes up and is ransacked by local rowdies, infuriating Arnie more than ever. Then Garner arrests Arnie and friends, not the local perpetrators, to hold in jail pending an investigation after the holiday.

Emmett hangs himself in Arnie’s barn (he rents a room in the farmhouse). When Arnie, fresh out of jail, discovers the body late at night, he honors Emmett with a private wake. Drinking too much at his one-man wake, Arnie is inspired to move the body to the town park with a note suggesting a homophobic lynching.

By the time Shandy returns home, Garner’s investigation is challenged by the arrival of an F.B.I. special agent who threatens to put the hate crimes under federal jurisdiction. Arnie’s lawyer manages to concoct an unusual alliance between Arnie and Garner to get the F.B.I. out of community affairs. Shandy finds out the truth: there was no hate crime. Garner painted the graffito himself in order to bait Arnie into doing something outrageous and provide publicity for his campaign. Arnie, of course, moved the body. Related hoaxes were driven by the intensity of personal hostility.

Once the F.B.I. is gone, life in Hamartin goes on – with Arnie and Garner in conflict as much as ever. Shandy leaves town for good, now financially secure, her life ahead of her. For the first time she realizes how much she’s been influenced by sharing Emmett’s last two weeks so intimately. He means more to her than she realized.

            EMMETT’S GIFT is a literary novel of suspense, and the story of a young woman’s coming of age against the backdrop of small town bigotry and personal sexual experimentation.